Leo Tarvi: Paranormal Investigator!

The Ben Jordan games are point and click adventures, like the old Lucasarts games, and they are completely free to download and play. I found them years ago and would now and then learn that a new game was out and play it. I’m excited to see the end of the story, but a little sad that there won’t be any more of them.

The games follow Ben Jordan, a young man who’s decided to follow what would have been my dream job: investigating weird, paranormal events. The first two games were very silly comedies, but in the third the tone suddenly got a lot darker. The creator, Francisco Gonzalez, has since remade the first two games with voice acting and updated graphics, and slightly changed to fit more into the mood the series developed. So if you decide to play through them all, don’t be shocked when the voices go silent and the looks get weaker in the third game.

These are mystery & puzzle games, the kind you want to keep a notebook handy while you play. The art and the acting get the job done, but it’s pretty clear that these games were made by amateurs working in their spare time. That really doesn’t take away from the plots and the puzzles, though, which are excellent. Each game is a story in its own right, but there is also a story arc over the whole series. The plots are good, the characters are interesting, and the puzzles are challenging but not usually terribly frustrating.

If you’re a Linux user, like myself, the games work in WINE. So don’t let that “windows” label turn you away.